


conceal, don't feel

by CongressIsAliens



Series: The World Is Shit, Let’s Write Fic [18]
Category: Phineas and Ferb
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Human Perry the Platypus (Phineas and Ferb), Hurt No Comfort, Introspection, Vignette, perry is v cynical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:08:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26809390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CongressIsAliens/pseuds/CongressIsAliens
Summary: Agents don't cry.At least, that's what you tell yourself.
Series: The World Is Shit, Let’s Write Fic [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1668385
Comments: 12
Kudos: 67





	conceal, don't feel

**Author's Note:**

> all my perryshmirtz week stuff is fluff, but too many sweets will rot your teeth. so have this.

Is it _strange_ to empathize with a bus station? 

On one hand, it's an inanimate place. How can you, a human with flesh and blood, empathize with a building? It's a bus station. It's not a person. It's a place.

On the other hand, you _feel_ like this bus station right now. Alone, cold, _abandoned_. 

The cracks in the walls and the floor and the roof feel like the cracks in your composure. One good gust of wind, and everything will come tumbling down. The carefully built lies, the bottled up emotions, everything. 

But that can't happen. This bus station cannot, _will_ not fall down. You can't let the house of cards tumble.

Conceal it. Hide everything away. Good agents don't have feelings. Feelings only get in the way, that's what you've been taught. Emotions are dangerous. Empathy is unheard of. Tell no one. Show no one. 

You are a machine, forged in training to achieve your fullest potential. An island, able and encouraged to work alone. 

After all, only villains fuel their work with emotions. Agents merely fight evil. They don't think about how their work affects those around them. 

Empathy has no place in an agent's life. When your pistol is pressed to the back of a villain's head, you can't let yourself think about their spouse. Their parents. Their _children_ , waiting and waiting for someone to come home. Someone who never will.

You know that feeling all too well. Your parents had been killed on one of their missions, when you were just five years old. You waited and waited for them to come back. You waited for _so long_. 

But they never came back. You were picked up and raised through the Elementary, Middle, and High School Without a Cool Acronym, then shuffled straight into training. 

And all through those years, whenever you needed empathy, understanding, _humanity_ , you were met with a simple verdict. 

Don't show your feelings, that's dangerous. Agents don't have emotions, they'll only get you killed.

And most importantly, _agents don't cry._

Agents don't cry, yet here you are, tears leaking out of your eyes and rolling down your cheeks. Agents don't cry, but your nose runs just the same. Agents don't cry, but one tear, then another, and another rolls down your face. They drop on the cement you're sitting on, creating miniature puddles. An ocean of saltwater for an ant, born of your own grief and pain and every other emotion you can't show in front of anybody else.

Agents don't cry, and here you are, sobbing in an abandoned bus station at three AM. 

Maybe if you tell it to yourself enough times, it'll stick. Agents don't cry, agents don't cry, _agents don't cry._

The reminders only server to spur more tears. 

The wind kicks up, and you wish you brought a coat. You left home without your signature orange sweater, and now you shiver in your plain white button-down. The thin, sightly-singed fabric offers no protection from the cold. 

In a way, the cold is nice. It stings, it reminds you that you're still alive. Not like when everything goes fuzzy, when your mind retreats into the back of your skull, when you feel like you're watching yourself go through the motions. 

You're _supposed_ to be cold and emotionless. The wind and the temperature just serve to remind you of that. 

Everything happens for a reason. Tonight, when you need the reminder of stoicism, the wind and the little stinging droplets of rain that come with it are here. Comforting, in a fucked-up sort of way. Calling up the necessity of emotion refusal. 

You're supposed to be stoic. Impassive. Somber, even. This is your life and you can't change it. 

A plastic bag blows by in the wind. Just another abandoned piece of garbage. Another piece of litter, a testament to humanity's careless nature. 

if you're honest, you and that bag are more similar than it may seem. 

You're both at the mercy of a higher force. The wind, Major Monogram, it all feels the same. You can't change a damn thing, so why try? Just go along for the ride, and you won't get hurt. 

Too badly, anyway. The bag will still end up in a storm drain somewhere, you'll still be bruised and bleeding and scarred. 

But it's easier than not going along. 

The single, working fluorescent light flickers above you, and you are yanked right back to thinking about your current situation. 

You are thirty-eight years old, a highly trained secret agent. And you are crying alone in an abandoned bus station.

How _pathetic_. 

You should be stronger than this. A secret agent does not cry, a secret agent does not mourn. Even when a mission like today's ends in tragedy, the agent merely wears the same stoic expression as always. 

No matter what, the agent never shows emotions. 

Emotions get in the way. Emotions never end well. Feelings, especially any sort of love, are almost forbidden. To say you love your niece and nephews is to seal your own coffin. 

No, emotions are not permitted. Not grief, not pain, not even any of the lighter emotions like joy or celebration.

To have emotion is to admit weakness. To admit weakness is to sign your own death warrant. 

And as OWCA's best operative in the States, you can't do that. You have to _prove_ you're the best. You can't just go around crying, or smiling, or looking anything but mildly annoyed. (Annoyance, as long as it's mild, and not directed at your superiors, seems to be the only acceptable emotion for an OWCA agent.)

So you bottle it up, never letting go of the tight grip you have on everything. And when that grip threatens to fade, you come here in the middle of the night. To cry and shed your grief. To scream, releasing your anger. To celebrate, to _be_.

Alone, just you and the emotions you're not allowed to feel. 

Alone in an abandoned bus station, sitting on a cold and rough cement floor, staring up at the cracked roof above your head. You can hear the faint scratches of some sort of rodent family, but it's more comforting than creepy. Despite how it seems, you're not _truly_ alone.

The station smells of old exhaust, stale fast food, and urine. Skitters of trash and long-dead leaves blow about in the frigid wind. Goosebumps have long since raised on your skin, tiny bumps under your fingers, a stark contrast to the rough concrete. The chill of the cement floor bleeds through the seat of your pants, freezing you straight to your core. 

There are too many sensations, and not enough at the same time. You cannot stay here much longer, but you long to. This is the only place where you can cry. The only place where absolutely nobody and absolutely nothing will judge you for being _human_. 

How fucked up is that? You have to come to an abandoned husk of what was once a bustling transport hub to even feel _anything_. 

The rain starts to fall in full force. It won't be long before the clogged gutters of this bus station will create waterfalls.

It's going to be hell getting back home in this weather. 

For a brief moment, you consider curling up here to spend the night. To milk just a little bit more _feeling._

It's a bad idea, likely to end in hypothermia and possibly death, but isn't that part of the allure?

Perhaps this is why so many agents risk their lives so often. Repress your feelings long enough, and they'll never recover. So the only fix an agent can get, the only way to feel anything, is adrenaline, shock, and risk. Even that is dulled with time, until even the riskiest of missions aren't enough. 

If you live long enough. Eventually, though, the missions catch up with you, and you wind up shipped to the address on the back of your identification card in a box. 

And you can't do that to the kids. You can't do that to Linda and Lawrence. 

So you get up off the ground, and you walk away from the abandoned bus station, and you leave your emotions behind. A quiet, familiar mask of stoicism fits over your face, settling in place with an almost disturbing ease to hide all your emotions from the world. 

Even as your clothes get soaked, your eyes are dry as you walk away.

Why wouldn't they be? After all, agents don't cry. 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos always appreciated!


End file.
